The United Empire Loyalists : A Chronicle of the Great Migration eBook

Nor can there be any doubt that the coming of the
Loyalists hastened the advent of free institutions.
It was the settlement of Upper Canada that rendered
the Quebec Act of 1774 obsolete, and made necessary
the Constitutional Act of 1791, which granted to the
Canadas representative assemblies. The Loyalists
were Tories and Imperialists; but, in the colonies
from which they came, they had been accustomed to
a very advanced type of democratic government, and
it was not to be expected that they would quietly
reconcile themselves in their new home to the arbitrary
system of the Quebec Act. The French Canadians,
on the other hand, had not been accustomed to representative
institutions, and did not desire them. But when
Upper Canada was granted an assembly, it was impossible
not to grant an assembly to Lower Canada too; and
so Canada was started on that road of constitutional
development which has brought her to her present position
as a self-governing unit in the British Empire.

CHAPTER II

LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES

It was a remark of John Fiske that the American Revolution
was merely a phase of English party politics in the
eighteenth century. In this view there is undoubtedly
an element of truth. The Revolution was a struggle
within the British Empire, in which were aligned on
one side the American Whigs supported by the English
Whigs, and on the other side the English Tories supported
by the American Tories. The leaders of the Whig
party in England, Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke,
Colonel Barre, the great Chatham himself, all championed
the cause of the American revolutionists in the English
parliament. There were many cases of Whig officers
in the English army who refused to serve against the
rebels in America. General Richard Montgomery,
who led the revolutionists in their attack on Quebec
in 1775-76, furnishes the case of an English officer
who, having resigned his commission, came to America
and, on the outbreak of the rebellion, took service
in the rebel forces. On the other hand there were
thousands of American Tories who took service under
the king’s banner; and some of the severest
defeats which the rebel forces suffered were encountered
at their hands.

It would be a mistake, however, to identify too closely
the parties in England with the parties in America.
The old Tory party in England was very different from
the so-called Tory party in America. The term
Tory in America was, as a matter of fact, an epithet
of derision applied by the revolutionists to all who
opposed them. The opponents of the revolutionists
called themselves not Tories, but Loyalists or ‘friends
of government.’

There were, it is true, among the Loyalists not a
few who held language that smacked of Toryism.
Among the Loyalist pamphleteers there were those who
preached the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance.
Thus the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, a clergyman of Virginia,
wrote: